A Flight of Storks and Angels

by Robert Devereaux

  Cut to June Lockridge. Luke talking with her in the foreground, her family seated on the blanket. A ripple of joy swept through the crowd. There were angels everywhere and again Mike focused on them, on the differences between them and their charges, and on the unsettling brain-buzz. It had come upon him so suddenly, so completely, in Ward’s backyard. It had been self-evident. Overwhelmingly real. But now he wondered. And now the camera moved at Luke’s back, parting the way. He heard someone shout, “It’s the mayor!” and he remembered that moment, him and Patti able to glimpse the miracle from where they stood, bobbing over shoulders, the beauty of Mayor Cosgrove and Harold Porter loving one another, the soft glow and toplike hum of their conjoined angels canopied above. But on-screen, the crowd gave and the angels were there, but beneath them a Clorox-blue blur concealed ninety-five percent of their love, the feet and lower legs exposed, the mayor’s hair and forehead moving in and out of the air above the blur. Where he had felt elation and triumph this afternoon, he now felt shame only, deep and burning behind his face. “The broadcast of course was live and uncensored, as Petrakis enthused about love and angels. The FCC is contemplating punitive action against the network. Neither Luke Petrakis, nor novelist T. E. Jameson, who is rumored to be somehow connected with the events in Auroville, could be reached for comment. In Atlanta, I’m Judith Kinkaid.”

  A sharp inrush of air from the bed was followed by a staccato series of sobs. “What are they saying, Mikey?” Patti’s breasts shuddered beneath her blouse. Her frail angel shimmered like heat over blacktop as she wiped her eyes with one bent wrist.

  Steady. There was a metallic hollowness to El Cid’s voice where before there had been a solid ingot of steel.

  Mike stopped. He stared directly at his silver angel where it hovered between him and Patti. It had seemed so vividly real for two days, but now he entertained doubts: Its edges were hazy; its eyes flickered with veiled panic, as if it had been found out; its skin was more like cheap gray plastic than conquistador armor, now that Mike cast a critical eye on it.

  Only believe. Far away and dwindling.

  Mike dragged deep, huffed it out through his nose. A glare glossed his eye. “Yeah man, sure. I believe in you like I believe in Tinkerbelle and the Tooth Fairy.”

  “Don’t say that, Mikey. Please?” A high whine from Patti on the bed, trembling like the frail little twit she was; nice piece, all out of control when he rammed it into her, but a damned nuisance sometimes. He liked to wrestle with Patti between fucks, rib-tickle her until she pleaded for mercy. But he’d never hit her; just made the gesture, gave her the look. But anger billowed now in his head and in his heart, anger toward Keeshan and June Lockridge and the old fart that lived in the tree. They’d made him lose face in public; they’d made him cry and go all goody-goody and confess the family sins in public; they’d manipulated his girl to the point where she’d rejected him in favor of Len Frome. And, good Christ, he’d gone along with that, a shuffle and a nod for the boss-man.

  Later for that shit. He stubbed the butt out in the ashtray on his desk, his annoyance at the bitch on the bed blooming without bound, that wet face a focus, magnetic to his hand. The rage, the hand, the will to inflict. There were highlights glinting the air, like the memory of pond water sparkling in the sun; but Mike, intent on something else entirely, strode through them oblivious.

  *****

  Calvin DeSario, couched between his parents in front of the set, felt increasingly trapped there. His father’s huge left arm pressed on his shoulders along the couch back as he leaned in and gestured with the remote, leaping from channel to channel and swearing his disgust. Calvin’s mom sat to his left, her face pale, not a peep out of her, but he saw that the beautiful hands which had graced her neck, causing comment today in the square, were gone now. Tears welled in his eyes. Without the blessing of those angelic hands, his mother seemed stripped of grace, older, fallen into sadness and resignation.

  All lies, Cal, what they’re saying. The bubble lady fizzed and fumed overhead. He knew she was right. But no rightness in her and no firmness in his faith in her could bring back those hands nor make meringue-white and audible his father’s hazy and inaudible guardian, which dissipated into sorrow even as Calvin watched.

  “I don’t believe this.” The remote recoiled again to bring up yet another news report, caught at its beginning, some vapid-faced newscaster boxed beside a folksy Harvard sociology prof, eyebrows bristling, tie askew, who ticked off cases of mass delusion down through the ages. “Jesus Christ, we’ve been had. Fucking nutcase and his two kids hoodwinked us. Then your old high school sweetheart, big-boy-motherfucker Luke Petrakis, breezed into town and put Auroville on the map, right up there next to Jonestown and Salem and the Maharishi’s Oregon paradise.”

  “That bozo doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” It slipped out, and his father rounded on him, couch cushions giving as he got into Calvin’s face. His skin felt like a prison suit suddenly and there was too much angry flesh in the air. The eyes, harsher than ever, harsh as a desolate nightscape, drilled into him.

  “Sure, wise guy.” The remote tapped him once lightly on the forehead, a cold insubstantial bar whose vibrations decayed on his skull. “Him and the others, they’ve talked to folks like us after the fact, they’ve seen this kind of thing before. Right, they’re just blowing smoke.”

  Go along with him.

  “And speaking of smoke, that’s just what my so-called guardian angel went up in as soon as the shockwave hit me, as soon as I let myself see through him. We’ve got a Jim Jones in our midst, three of them, and we’re going to have to do something about it.” His dad nudged the remote into his mom’s arm. “You’re okay now Kitty, aren’t you? Can’t see any hands any more, can you?” His mom said no, and it scraped at Calvin’s throat. “Look at that,” said his dad, pointing toward Petrakis and Mister Gregerson. “Empty air and a couple of deluded fools. American public’s going to eat this up. This town will be crawling with reporters by morning, bet my bottom dollar, and when they get here, you two and Mike are going to be straightened out, right? You clear in the head, son?”

  Tell him yes.

  “I . . . I don’t know, I—”

  “Damned fucking kid.” His left hand gripped Calvin’s hair tight at the base of the skull and he freed his right hand for violence by tossing the remote in his wife’s lap. “I shoulda never let you play with that sick little wacko, filling your head with his invisible-companion shit. You grew out of that once, Cal, remember? It’s crap. Grade-A number-one bullshit. Jameson and those two brats stuck it to this town so quick, we didn’t see it coming. All of us went under; we bought it. I’m not making like I’m holier-than-thou. But, son, it’s time to snap out of it, time to smell the bacon.” His father thumbed upward to where his angel waved caution. “I don’t see no stinking fizzy lady and you don’t either, am I right?”

  A muffled squabble came shattering down from above: Patti’s terror. Mike’s belligerence. It shocked Calvin only in contrast to the harmony that had softened their home since Tuesday. His father didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “Am I right?” The fist tightened at his hair. The voice went low.

  From the TV: “Odd? Yes. But just how odd remains to be seen, as the story unfolds in the days ahead.”

  Agree, Calvin. Tell him he’s right.

  Calvin nodded. “You’re . . . you’re right, Dad.”

  His father mirrored the nod, and smiled, and did not release the root-yank of hair he held. “Kitty, turn that crap off and leave the room.” His dad looked only at him. “Calvin and I have something we need to thrash out.” His mother’s trembling hand rose and flicked off the TV. More anger descended from upstairs, clear now, bone harrowing.

  He knows.

  Yeah, no kidding. “No, really, Dad.” His voice was laced with desperation. “She’s gone.”

  “It’s not that easy, son.” His father’s raised hand flexed and a black pilot-light flared in his eyes. Calvi
n winced to see it, not simply because he had basked for two days in a gentler light, the loss of which was bad enough, but because what he now saw burning in his father’s glare was far meaner and nastier than anything he’d seen before. “I know you right down to the spine, Calvin James DeSario, and the terrible certainty is growing in me that the only way to—”

  “—Daddy, please don’t—”

  “—the only way to free you from your delusions is to beat it way the fuck out of you so hard and so mercilessly it won’t be able to find its way back.” He’d never seen a glee so ruthless overtake the old man as he worked himself up to meting out punishment.

  Be strong, Calvin. Cling to your core.

  Yes, I will, he thought; I will, I will. And he kept repeating that phrase, blow after blow, long past the time it had any meaning, denying his guardian, learning through his pain to fake conviction at a depth that would fool his father into believing him, growing soul-wise in his denial and glad to see, through puffed lids, that she effervesced with the best of them, hardy and proud and fizzy with love and affection for him.

  *****

  It was a little spooky, despite the afternoon light’s only having begun to wane, for her and Ward to be alone in the house, knowing that his gramma had died and been taken away not so many hours before. Joydrop, they guessed, was with Luke Petrakis. Grampa was still off somewhere in the woods, though there was nothing to say he wouldn’t show up at any moment and June wondered nervously what comfort she could offer when that happened.

  You’ll manage. Appropriate words will come.

  They lay belly-down on the floor, too close to the TV (but then no grown-ups were there to remind them), digging into a huge bowl of popcorn and puzzling over the coverage they were watching. Timothy’s facial tints bled gradually through a cycle of patchwork Picasso-esque Gertrude-Stein brilliances as he floated laterally in a wide easy circle around Ward’s side of the room. Jeannie, as was her wont, quiesced cross-legged near June’s left shoulder, concerned with the adult negativity flowing out of the screen.

  “I don’t get it,” Ward said. “There you are and next to you is Jeannie as vivid as she can be, and right behind Mister Petrakis I see Clancy looking like a fat leprechaun who’s swallowed a cat.”

  “Yes, I see him too. Look, he just finger-waggled at the camera. And winked.” Her TV self was busy talking, a weird young lady she had a hard time recognizing.

  “I saw that too, so we’ve got to be seeing real stuff and not make-believe. So how come Dan Rather and the rest can’t see it?” He popped a few kernels into his mouth.

  “Dunno.” June shrugged. “Maybe we’re all hypnotized like they’re saying.” She gave Ward oogly-boogly gestures into the eyes and shared his laughter. “Or maybe it’s the reverse and they’re the ones who are hypnotized, and only if you see your own angel does some real thing in the mind switch on so you can witness in a sort of four-dimensional way what’s really truly on the tape.”

  Ward shook his head. “Emulsion’s emulsion.”

  “Well, pardon me, Mister Scientist.”

  “You’re pardoned.”

  “Or should I say Mister Flawed Scientist. Emulsion’s used for film and photographs, not videotape.”

  “Same difference. Can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”

  “You can if it’s a bloodstone.”

  “A what?”

  “Heliotrope.”

  The phone rang. Ward leaped up to get it and bounded over her. She watched the blue blur hiding Mayor Cosgrove and her husband and, above them, the incredible light-show of mingled angels. Remembering the total sense of delight that had seized them all, June grew angry at the blindness of these commentators and their so-called experts in human psychology. Who were they to judge, who hadn’t shared the privilege of witnessing it, who hadn’t seen for themselves the totality of what there was to see?

  “It’s for you. Your mom and dad.” Ward looked pale and sounded queasy. Timothy wore his uh-oh look.

  Rounding into the kitchen, she took the receiver and brought it under her hair to her left ear. “Hello?” she said, looking quizzically at Ward.

  “Young lady, you listen and listen good. Your father and I want you out of that house right now. For the past half hour, our phone’s been ringing off the hook. You’ve got some music to face here, and you’re going to face it. We won’t let them browbeat you but we’re not about to shut them out either.”

  “Mom, who—?”

  “Reporters, that’s who. You had to go and give your full name on that disgusting tape. Now they—(George, get that, will you?)—Now they’ve found our number and—(What? No, invite him in, give him some iced tea, tell him she’ll be here soon, answer all his questions.)—You’re going to hustle your butt home, little lady, no backtalk. You tell that Svengali Ted Jameson to drive you home. No, you wait right there, in front of the house, nobody with you. Your father will come get you; you gather your things right now and get out of that house this instant.”

  Her mother sounded pruned and harsh.

  She’s lost her angel.

  Yes. June felt drained. Her legs began to shake and she had to steady herself against the counter.

  “What is it?” Ward asked, obscuring her mom’s words.

  “Shouldn’t be more than ten—JUNE LOCKRIDGE, YOU KEEP THAT LITTLE BASTARD AWAY FROM YOU, YOU HEAR ME?” A wrench to her heart, her mother suddenly off the deep end. She’d never heard such terror there, such an enveloping sense of threat.

  “Yes, mom. Goodbye.” June hung up fast, not waiting for the receiver to do it but breaking the connection with her right hand. Then she came into Ward’s arms and hugged him fiercely, dissolving in tears at the look in Jeannie’s eyes.

  *****

  The eyes of Carver’s guardian gleamed like doubloons as he listened to Sarah on the phone describe the birth of her baby. She amused him, his golden angel, who’d gained strength and a voice downtown today. More strength than he himself was feeling. Fatigue still dogged him, though it was much less pronounced than the day before.

  “Dad, you’ve got to come see her. She’s amazing.”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “And her angel is a delight. Listen, I watched those news broadcasts, turned them right off. Nobody’s going to tell me I’m imagining things. Tom got caught up in their lies, came in with a lid over his fuming, and I saw it was less wearing to keep quiet. Bunch of other folks here too whose faith was still too new. Really sad to see.”

  Don’t be a fool. Go.

  “Do you think Tom—?”

  “He wants you here, Dad. He just doesn’t know it yet is all. I caught snippets of his arguments with his angel before he gave the poor thing up, and I know they talked it over.”

  “I’m pretty tired from the day’s events.”

  “Tomorrow morning then. Early.”

  Say yes.

  He did. Still ambivalent. Told Mindy so, lying next to him in her bed, her guardian mirroring her nakedness in the air above.

  “You’ll be fine, just like your Goldie says,” assured Mindy, her hair gleaming like red dusk against the pillow. “Now lie back down and cuddle with me. I like the way you do things to me, and I love to watch Goldie mix it up with Angelina here above us like egg white and yolk all running deliriously together.”

  He lay down and faced her, head propped up like hers was, and drew her close so that the split-apart world came together along the mystical jointure of their bodies. Her fingers teased along his hip, turned to light nails.

  “Ouch!” He drew back slightly.

  “Sorry.”

  “I guess there’s shade and then there’s shade.”

  “You want more aloe vera on that burn?”

  “Remember what happened last time you asked that.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “My hand strayed a little. Just might stray again.”

  “Something strange is happening on TV,” he said.

  “Ask me if I care.” Her h
and caressed his neck, her lush lips coaxed open his mouth and played there long and slow until they came away with an exaggerated smack.

  Divinity.

  “No fooling,” he said, happily gasping for breath. Mindy laid a leg along his thigh, pressing against his tumescence. “I could sure use a drink.”

  Suddenly serious: “Don’t say that, not even joking, okay? You don’t need that.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  She smiled. “Don’t you ‘yes, dear’ me, sweetheart. I ain’t your momma and I ain’t your boss, but your lover is what I am, and I like it fine. You want something to drink, you’ve got two choices. One’s the glass of water sitting right there on your nightstand.”

  “What’s the other?”

  Sweet Jesus, I think I know. Goldie and Angelina had begun to shimmer and swim together above them, a canopy of divinity and sanctioned lust.

  Mindy reached down along her belly, then brought her liquid to his lips and coated them, chased the tantalizing taste with another kiss, deeper and longer than the last, until she turned him on his back and came down around him to the hilt, and above them their conjoined angels began to sizzle and spark all over again.

  *****

  For Luke the worst of it was watching Joydrop’s pure angel vanish gem by gem. They’d sat there dumbfounded in Luke’s motel room, feeling the effects of the TV barrage, the crew sprawled on one bed, Joydrop soothing his brow on the other. Clancy pleaded, Don’t believe them, believe in me, but he began—as the collegial ridicule flooded across the airwaves and Luke’s insides twisted toward nausea—to sound more and more like the tail-end of a beautiful dream struggling for survival. “I need to be alone,” he’d said, then, taking Joy’s hand, “not you,” as the others went off to one of the other rooms. Soon after, when they could no longer be sure what they saw above the blotch covering the mayor and her spouse (or in one case the cubist patchwork they were turned into)—a flashback of fireflies, static on the tape, or just misfiring brain cells—he’d rushed for the john, closed the door in time, collapsed and unlidded the commode and let it out all in one movement, spitting, feeling the second wave seize him, Clancy pale above him, tenacious little bugger, he’d give him that, shouting to Joy that he was okay, no, don’t come in. He’d rinsed his mouth, brushed his teeth, the shame of it coming in waves and making it hard to stand up sometimes, his translucent nemesis pleading soundlessly in the mirror. And then Luke had ventured out and fallen into Joy’s embrace and, to the incessant keen and drone of the TV, saw each perfect bead of Nemo—last shreds of Clancy reflected as an illusion of anguish—dwindle and evaporate, as Joydrop sobbed into his shoulder.